Why is Drug Discovery So Hard (and Expensive)?

Notwithstanding herbal medicines and the re-emergence of leeches as therapy, it is only in the last 70 years that physicians have had proven medical science to support “the healing arts.” Potions and procedures of dubious value have been replaced by powerful medicines that treat infections, heart disease, diabetes and mental illness.

While the benefits are clear, the difficulties and cost of creating new medicines are a source of widespread frustration to patients and industry alike. FDA Matters is impressed that current efforts to speed up drug discovery are gaining momentum. At the same time, the nature of human biology dictates that the creation of new therapies will never be easy or inexpensive.

Recently, Matthew Herper of Forbes wrote about the “truly staggering cost of inventing new drugs”, a range he put at $4-11 billion per success! The point is that every success is bearing the cost of a staggeringly-large number of expensive failures.

The chart at the end of this column shows that about 10,000 compounds are screened to produce about 250 compounds that are promising enough for pre-clinical and early clinical testing. In turn, this produces five compounds in late stage clinical testing and only one approved drug. As a result, efforts to improve drug discovery have two goals:

early identification of compounds with the highest probability of proving safe and effective, and

the ability to discern and discard promising-looking compound that are, nonetheless, likely to fail at later stages.

The growing consensus behind these goals has pushed collaboration and innovation much faster than would otherwise be expected. Identification and validation of biomarkers, pharmacogenomics, toxicology databases, and new compound screening methodologies are among the many approaches to enhance the discovery process.

NIH has committed to speeding early drug discovery through the just-launched National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS). I admit that I was skeptical when it was first proposed because it looked like NIH wanted to compete with industry. However, NCATS’ is appropriately focused on generating useful early-stage drug discovery tools, data and methodologies that will be made widely available and are complementary and supportive of industry efforts. (The advocacy group, Faster Cures, recently held an informative webinar with NCATS’ leaders. Here are links to the audio and accompanying slides.)

FDA has acknowledged the need to be more attuned to advancing medical innovation as an integral part of the agency’s role in promoting the public health. This was reflected in FDA’s October, 2011 report, Driving Biomedical Innovation: Initiatives to Improve Products for Patients and by its willingness (during user fee negotiations and other venues) to commit to more early-stage meetings with companies. In addition, FDA has committed resources to creating and validating new tools and methodologies for drug discovery. Most important of all, FDA recognizes the need to act on the critical next stages after drug discovery by creating a more predictable regulatory pathway that minimizes the time that it takes safe and effective new medicines to gain approval.

All these activities taken together may produce dramatic improvements on the front end of drug discovery. This would provide the ability to focus on the “most promising, least likely to fail” compounds and reduce the number of expensive failures. In some cases, companies and regulators might know enough from the initial discovery screening to shorten or narrow pre-clinical and clinical testing.

The new focus and activity on drug discovery is reason to be hopeful….but these efforts will take time to bear fruit. The process of taking a compound “from bench to bedside” must still be measured in years.

No matter how much we know, there will always be clinical trials that fail, sometimes quite miserably, just when everyone is most sure that the solution is logical and success guaranteed.That’s why drug discovery will never be easy or inexpensive.

adapted and republished with permission by FDA Matters, a weekly blog covering FDA policy and regulation